Parenting Archive

The risk of a child pedestrian being killed by a driver is twice as high on Halloween night.

If you are driving today (especially during the hours of 4-8 pm when most young pedestrian deaths occur) please exercise extreme caution and follow these tips:

1. Drive slowly and don’t pass stopped vehicles. The driver might be dropping off children.
2. Park your cell phone. Tonight is the worst possible night to be a distracted driver!
3. Watch for children darting into the street. Kids can cross the street anywhere and most young pedestrian deaths happen at spots other than intersections.
4. Always yield to young pedestrians. Children might not stop, either because they don’t see your vehicle approaching or don’t know how to safely cross the street.
5. Communicate with other drivers. Always use your turn signals and if you have to pull over to drop off or pick up your kids, turn on your hazard lights.

Have a Happy & Safe Halloween!

Okay, obviously not true but all I could do at open house this evening was sing Pink Floyd in my head and think of random Kindergarten Cop quotes. And come home to write this.

Dear teachers,

I bow to you. I really do. As a mom who homeschooled and now is sending a kiddo to navigate the waters of school at his request, I don’t know how you do it. Teaching and corralling my own children is nerve wracking enough. I can’t imagine doing it with 20+ kids who aren’t even your own. Add the pressures of testing, teaching styles, grades, and various other controversial topics and I imagine your days are just full of stress.

Let me just tell you something. Something that you may already know, but maybe just need to hear it again.

I don’t really care how my kid scores on all these exams in the long run. I don’t care if he’s top in his class. I don’t care if he won a spelling bee or if he’s a faster or slower reader than other kids. If the way it’s being taught doesn’t work for him, then we will find another way. As long as he’s doing his very best and is happy, then right now that is enough for me.

What I do care about is that he is learning to love and respect others. I feel like I’ve been teaching this at home, but it can only go so far when your world consists of your family and friends. His world is about to get a whole lot bigger, and I need you to help him navigate it. You are there on the front lines with him. I need you to be his role model and his platoon leader.

Obviously there are lots of things going on lately that are hateful and confusing. I feel like especially right now our society has reached a critical point where we need to alter our direction of where we’ve been heading in regards to basic respect and courtesy. Kids may not know the details but I guarantee you they know the underlying feel of it. I’ll be damned if my child ever feels it’s okay to hurt or belittle another person for who they are. So please, help my child feel safe to stand up for what’s right. Help his classmates embrace him for who he is and him to embrace them for who they are, each individually. Help him to trust his “inside feeling” when something isn’t right. If a child is lonely, encourage him to find a way to help. If he is the lonely one, encourage another child to do the same for him.

This all starts at home, and I need you to help me continue it at school.

I don’t care how fast he can do a math worksheet or how neat his handwriting is. I care about whether he’s happy. I care about what things make him happy. I care about whether he loves others as he loves himself and that he loves himself as he loves others. I tell him to always help others because it is the right thing to do. To always have open arms. I need you to show him in action.

I’m sure this is redundant, and something you already do without question. Maybe I’m just writing this to reassure myself.

Thank you for teaching our kids math, handwriting, and all the other academic necessities that serve us well in life. But mostly thank you for training up our kids to be humans when they are with you. Good humans. Humane, kind, generous, strong humans who will steer humanity in the right direction. I could do it all by myself, but I’m choosing not to. I’m choosing not to because I feel like it takes a village, and our family extends beyond blood to the people around us that we share aspects of our life with.

Ah, summer time. For most school age kids, it’s a break from the hectic up-at-dawn mornings hurriedly getting ready for school. It also means more lax bedtimes, and if you are certifiably insane and willing to give up your evening quiet time (which I am not, can you tell?) it means your kids are up late. That’s great if they sleep in, but most do not. So how much sleep do kids really need? And how important is it to maintain a sleep schedule?

The answer to both is a lot, and very.

According to the National Sleep Foundation, kids ages 1-3 need 12-14 hours, ages 3-5 need 11-13 hours, and ages 5-10 need 10-11 hours. Kids desperately need these hours for both physical and mental development. Kids who don’t get enough sleep can have mood swings, behavioral problems, cognitive problems, and physical symptoms such as headaches. You know how awful, forgetful, and physically ill you feel when your newborn hasn’t let you sleep in weeks? That’s how your kids feel. Although instead of being a coffee guzzling zombie like you, they ramp up in activity and also in bad attitudes and behavior. Sadly, the NSF says about 30% of kids fall in this category of less sleep than what is recommended.

PubMed has a study published by the Japanese Society of Child Neurology that shows the long term effects of having an early bedtime. A large group (over 40,000) children were followed over a lengthy period of time and it was found that children that had an early and predictable bedtime at the age of two were much less likely to have attention and behavioral issues at age 8. There are literally hundreds of studies showing the positive effects of consistent and early bedtimes on children’s health, and I could type them out for days.

So even though you may not need to be up and at ‘em first thing in the morning, try to maintain your child’s sleep routine throughout the summer. Vacations and other adventures are always going to throw a loop into your routine, but for the most part try to keep it within the norm. The recommended bedtime for elementary aged kids and younger surprisingly isn’t when-they-collapse-on-the-floor-o’clock. It’s between 7-8pm. My kids are in bed between 7 and 7:30. Yes, it’s still light out in the summer. Black out curtains work wonders! They are healthy and well rested, and I get a few peaceful hours to myself in the evenings after being tortured playing with them all day. Everyone wins.

Try to have the same routine every evening. Rooms should be nice and dark, nice and cool, and kids shouldn’t have TVs in their rooms (so basically nice and boring). Turn off electronics an hour before bedtime. Try to avoid school and sports functions that last up till bedtime.

So yeah, I get a lot of flack for peacing out early from social functions and whatnot because my kids have to go to bed. Whatever though, it’s science ya’ll. Science and sanity. My two favorite things.

Temperatures are on the rise, and soon the reports of children left in hot cars will be on the rise, too. I have a lot to say about that, but first I want to share a couple stories.

Sometimes when we’re cleaning up after dinner, my husband will take out the trash. He’ll announce to me that he has removed the trash bag from the garbage can so that I’ll know not to throw anything in there until he has come back inside and replaced it with a new bag.

I’ll hear him and acknowledge him. And then, almost inevitably, I’ll go over to the empty garbage can and throw something in.

I’m not stupid and I’m not trying to be a jerk. It’s not that I didn’t hear him. It’s that when I have something to throw away, my instinct is to do what I always do: Throw it away.

Then there was this one time in college when my friend and I were planning a drive to Arizona for spring break. I had been looking forward to it for months, and it was an easy drive I’d made before: Get onto I-10 (just down the street from my school) and head east for about six hours.

So when the morning of our trip arrived, my friend and I packed up my car and we headed out. Ten minutes later, my friend said, “Um…aren’t we going the wrong way?” Indeed we were. Instead of heading east to Phoenix, we were headed west toward Los Angeles. Why? Because that’s the route I took to drive home every week or two. It’s what I was used to, so it’s what I did without thinking about it, even though I knew to head east to Arizona.

What do trash cans and roadtrip detours have to do with heatstroke? A heck of a lot.

There are caregivers who intentionally leave their children in a hot car, usually because they don’t realize the danger. Sometimes these parents are downright negligent, like when they leave a child to go gambling. That happens in less than 20% of cases, though. Usually when we hear about children dying in hot cars, it’s a tragic instance of the parent forgetting the child was there. Most often that happens when there’s a change in routine.

It’s very easy for people to claim they would never be those parents. They love their children too much to forget them. They are too smart to let something like that happen.

If you think it can’t happen to you, you’re wrong. It can happen to anyone, including very intelligent, diligent, loving, caring parents who are just as human as the rest of us. They don’t forget their children because they don’t love them or don’t care. They forget their children because humans are wired to follow routines. We’re creatures of habit, and habits are hard to break.

When I throw some food scraps into a liner-less trash can or head the wrong way on the freeway, it’s because that’s what I’m used to doing, despite “knowing” I’m supposed to do something different.

It’s the same with the parent whose morning routine usually involves driving straight to the office. That’s what they do and what they’ve done, maybe every weekday for months or years. Then one morning, something changes. Maybe the parent who usually takes the baby to daycare is sick, so the other parent needs to drop him off. The parent knows this, of course. He or she packs up the diaper bag and straps the baby into the car seat. Maybe he or she talks or sings to the baby as the drive starts. But then the baby falls asleep and the parent focuses on driving. And then the routine takes over. The parent goes on autopilot—like we all do, more often than we realize—and he or she instinctively makes the right toward the office instead of the left toward the daycare. And then tragedy strikes.

You can say it’ll never happen to you, but the truth is that it can happen to anyone. I guarantee that every person reading this has had one of “those” moments, where they fully intend to do one thing but then do another out of habit. Usually those moments are nothing more than a slight inconvenience; usually they don’t have dire consequences.

If you’re still feeling smug about being a superior parent, read this piece from the Washington Post, and try to do it without crying.

Over the past few years, as the media has paid more attention to the issue of children dying in hot cars, several inventions have emerged to try to prevent the tragedy from happening. There have been a couple car seats, including the Evenflo Advanced Embrace with SensorSafe, designed with technology built in to remind parents a child is with them. GMC has introduced an alarm that sounds when it senses a child might be in the back seat (due to a back door having been opened and shut before the drive started). Aftermarket chest clips and mats have been created, and people have marketed gadgets like a device that blocks a driver’s exit from the car to remind them that their child is in the back.

Some of these products are more reliable than others. Electronic technology can fail (though Evenflo’s system seems to be more reliable than many other methods). Some (like thick mats or non-approved chest clips) could potentially be dangerous.

The good news is that you don’t need technology or fancy gadgets to help prevent these tragedies, but you should do something. If you have your child in the car—especially if that’s out of the ordinary—put your purse or briefcase in the back seat (preferably on the floor so it’s less likely to fly around). If you don’t use a purse or briefcase, put some other item back there that you’ll need once you get to your destination: Your phone (that will also cut down on the temptation to use it while driving), your coat, one of your shoes.

Talk with your preschool or daycare about procedures for when a child doesn’t show up: Do they call to try to locate the child? If not, see if they will. If your spouse or another person usually handles drop-off, keep in touch with them, too, if possible. If Dad is changing his routine to drop off the kids, Mom can call him around drop-off time to make sure he made it. You and your childcare provider can take Ray Ray’s Pledge.

Don’t intentionally leave children in the car, even if you’re just running into the store for five minutes. In that time, the car could already be heating up to deadly levels. Always keep your parked vehicle locked – even if it’s in your garage. Kids die every year because they get into open cars or trunks and then can’t get out.

If you see a child left alone in a car, immediately call 911. Do not wait for the parent to return because chances are you have no idea how long the child has been in the car already. If the child appears to be in distress, check for unlocked doors or break a window (away from the child) if you need to.

And as you encounter stories of babies accidentally left in cars, take a moment to have some compassion instead of judgement. Everybody makes mistakes. Be thankful if yours aren’t fatal ones.